My office has been running SSD's as the primary drive in all machines for awhile now (except the server.. I don't feel comfortable with that yet). The time savings in reboots alone over time easily justifies the cost.

If you aren't running an SSD, I'd highly advise it, especially with the crazy deals that are out there now. You could pop a 60 in for your OS if you wanted and only be out 60 bucks.

We've been running them on GW2 development for years now. Very little issue and a HUGE performance win. Also, for programmers, we compile a lot. This is very disk intensive, so it is a massive productivity gain. It also means we stress the drives like mad and have had very little failure issues (if any).

WvW last night convinced me my 5 year old CPU needs replaced. Of course, I can't get just a new CPU, I need a new motherboard too. At that point my RAM is out of date but RAM is cheap, so whatever.

I'm kind of leaning towards a CPU/Motherboard bundle if it means increased compatibility. I prefer Intel over AMD. Thoughts on i5 vs i7? Some i7's have a slower per core clock but turboboost to a faster speed?

I would go to whatever computer store is near you like Fry's or Microcenter and see what kind of bundles they are offering. i5 should be enough really but if you have extra money to blow an i7 wouldn't be bad either.

I got a nice bundle with an i5-3570K where the CPU is already normally priced cheaper than Newegg and with a ASROCK motherboard. Not the motherboard I really wanted but that took an additional $70 off the price and the motherboard was already pretty cheap.

It's pretty fast and if I ever feel like overclocking it it's designed for it...don't think I could've gotten a better deal.

You may want to try microcenter online they always have the cheapest CPU prices I've seen.

I built my computer earlier this year and used an unlocked i5 2500K at 3.3ghz and overclocked it to 4Ghz. Price wise it was hard to beat and it performs great. The overclock was done via a piece of software and took a few seconds to complete and this processor is designed for it. Mine is a Sandy Bridge proc but Kezzy has the Ivy bridge equivalent i5 3570K and it is similar in price so you will probably want to go with an Ivy Bridge motherboard.

My Sandy Bridge Motherboard is also AsRock because it got great reviews (at the time) regarding price and performance and I have purchased a second AsRock motherboard to build a computer for my dad about a month ago. The only other company I have purchased a motherboard from before is EVGA and that was a long time ago. EVGA prices are premium but I had a great experience with it. Everything just worked. I can't say the same for AsRock. They market a lot of "features" and I honestly never install them because they seem to cause all kinds of trouble. Even some of the normal hardware AsRock uses has its share of problems. It could be that other companies or even just particular boards have the same types of problems with hardware but the AsRock software is crap. They have a USB booster, a RAM booster, a software booster for pretty much everything. If you buy an AsRock do yourself a favor and don't install the extra software, just the basic driver package. The booster software is more trouble than it is worth.

i personally use gigabyte boards which have been solid, bunch of bells and whistles that add some nice value and are well built. I have supported some ASRock in the past and have had some bad luck with them but that is when they were ASUS budget boards they have since been spun off into there own and compete on the higher end and actually might be bought out by ASUS again. I use AMD cause they are generally more bang for the buck you can get the best everything for an AMD build for under what it would cost for just the best CPU or MB of an Intel build in most cases.

Id peruse some Maximum PC issues and get an opinion from them they are usually pretty straight forward on the reviews they do they give good performance and value reviews. I peruse Tomshardware also but be leary of the forums cause its generally just fanbois flaming each other. Anandtech is pretty good too pretty straight forward.